Notebook

Phillips can tie father: If the Cowboys win today, head coach Wade Phillips will tie his father for NFL career regular-season victories with 82.

Bum Phillip went 82-77 in 11 seasons, including six with the Houston Oilers (1975-80).

The younger Phillips is 81-56 over 11 seasons, including the last four with Dallas.

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“I really don’t look at that,” he said. “I don’t agree with it anyway because I don’t count interim games. So I’m still behind him.”

Phillips replaced his father as head coach of New Orleans for the final four games of the 1985 season, going 1-3. He replaced Dan Reeves as head coach in Atlanta for the final three games of the 2003 season and went 2-1.

Phillips has long ties to Houston. He played linebacker at the University of Houston under coach Bill Yeoman from 1965-68 and was on his father’s staff with the Oilers.

“It’s really special,” Phillips said of returning to Houston. “It’s family. It’s home, and I played football there. I coached there. I went to high school in Port Neches. A lot of my life has been in Houston. ... It’s coming home for me.”

Yeoman, 82, has been close to Phillips, 63, ever since their days together with the Cougars. Phillips’ first coaching job was as a graduate assistant at UH in 1969.

“He was an extremely steady performer, very dependable, good intelligence,” Yeoman said. “He was not blessed with the greatest athletic skills, but he was very effective and a very pleasant young man to be around.”

Yeoman remembers that Phillips was a typical coach’s son in that he was fundamentally sound.

“He was always in front of the runner when he got to the line of scrimmage,” Yeoman said. “He didn’t have the great speed or great size, but he didn’t take many wrong steps. He had a great temperament, was a student of the game and was a tough, committed kid.”

Extra points: Since the NFL implemented bye weeks in 1990, Dallas is 17-4 in games the week preceding its bye. ... With a win, The Cowboys would become just the second NFL team since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970 to reach 400 wins (including playoffs). Pittsburgh is the only other franchise to have reached that milestone.

Dallas is a desperate team and Houston is due for a letdown after two hard-fought, emotional games.

Under normal circumstances, that would be enough to tilt the odds in favor of the Cowboys. But the Texans have this big-time intangible working for them: Their fans and everybody in their organization are sick and tired of playing second fiddle to Dallas.

That factor, plus a Cowboys offensive line that continues to have major issues, points to a Houston win.